Leviticus 18:22
by AlienZombies
Summary: Keith, Ellis and Dave go for ice cream.


This is a kind of old piece I decided to re-upload. Please take the time to tell me what you think! :)

**Leviticus 18:22**

It's a hot, quiet day in the middle of July. It's sunburn-weather, as Ellis's Mama would say. There isn't a cloud in the sky to speak of and the heat is persistent and dry. It's the sort of day that makes the boys gravitate towards each other without having to speak beforehand. Ellis finds Dave squatting on the curb outside of his trailer, poking around with the rocks. He's arranging them into a heart shape, but he's only about half-way done.

"Where's Keith at?" Ellis asks, standing before him with his hands in his pockets. He has his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes to shield them from the sun. He hasn't yet inherited his tow truck hat from Keith yet, won't until he turns eighteen and they kiss for the first time at the top of the ferris wheel. That's still three years away.

Dave looks up at Ellis through the straight, dark curtain of his bangs. His Mama cuts them that way. "Don't know," he says. He gets to his feet. "Did you stop by his house?"

"Naw," Ellis replies. "Not yet."

"Ain't you got your bike?"

"No. You ain't got one so I figured I shouldn't come round on one."

"That's awful nice of you." Dave smiles sweetly, and then all at once grabs at the gold crucifix hanging from his neck, holding it in one delicate hand. He is still shorter than Ellis, though in the final year of high school he will experience a tremendous growth spurt while Ellis maintains his puny freshman stature; Ellis leans in now and ruffles his hair, something Dave absolutely abhors. "Quit, you," Dave mutters, his cheeks coloring. With that, they walk to Keith's house.

They have a few minutes, and so Ellis regales Dave with some stories, and Dave laughs his high, fey laugh. He is a delicate boy.

"You're somethin' else, Ellis," he says. His eyes are big and dark.

"I _am_ pretty damn amazing," Ellis answers with a grin.

"Cocky, too."

"Well, some would say so."

Dave looks at him uncomprehendingly until Ellis gives a dramatic wink. As a teenager, his tact leaves much to be desired. A dirty color flushes up the sides of Dave's face in splotches, as if he has washed with red clay.

"You ain't funny," he says. He rolls the crucifix between his fingers. The gold paint has worn away on its tip, where he pinches it in times of high anxiety. Ellis stopped asking long ago what triggers it. And then, under his breath, Dave mutters, "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, Ephesians 4:29." and Ellis knows he has crossed the line.

Dave is a prayer boy, always has been and always will be. The Lord is close to him. In some ways, Ellis can relate – and in others, he feels awash in his own heathen behavior. Running naked through rivers and cussing on Sunday seem common to him. They always make Dave gasp and grumble.

The rest of the walk is relatively quiet. Dave keeps looking at him from the corner of his eye. He opens his mouth to speak and says nothing. Ellis stuffs his hands in his jeans pockets where they won't flail pointlessly as he talks and keeps his eyes on the road ahead. It's a nice day for a walk, all things considered, and it seems to take almost no time at all to reach the sprawling grounds of Keith's home.

Keith still lives in the expansive white house his father purchased six years ago. It's a lovely place where Ellis is frightened to play. Creeping vines, now sporting pretty white flowers, crawl up its stately front. The grass is perfectly straight and green all year. It is not a rich person's house – there is no gate or butler – but it is more than could ever be obtainable to someone like Ellis or Dave. Just knocking on the door gives Ellis suspicious shivers. In less than a year, when Keith's father catches him with one of those dirty books he found in a trash can in Atlanta, he will not live in that beautiful house anymore. After he tires of Ellis's hospitality, he won't live anywhere at all until he and Ellis pitch together to purchase a trailer six months after the gift of the tow truck hat.

Keith is home now, however. He answers the door clad in nothing but a pair of swim trunks. Dave balks for a moment.

"Ice cream?" Ellis asks.

Keith grabs a T-shirt and puts it on. "I like that plan," he says. "Hey, Dave."

"Hello."

"We're gettin' ice cream," Ellis tells Dave, as if he missed the conversation. "Do you want me to pay?"

Dave casts his eyes low and says nothing.

"I'll pay for him anyway," Keith says loudly. "Lord knows I got enough."

"Mighty kind of you," Dave mumbles. He tears his eyes off of the floor and straightens up, conditioning from his mother. Real men don't sulk, she always says. It's important to stand up straight or the Lord won't give you support when you stumble.

Keith nods and accepts it for what it is. There really is no getting around this awkward dynamic. Keith provides because he can. They couldn't hardly go anywhere if they expected Ellis and Dave to shell out for everything. Luckily for them, Keith is kind-spirited and flippant with his father's money. Though prone to schoolyard fights, he passionately guards his friends. He reminds Ellis of the big red dog he once had as a boy, the dog named Boone that died of stomach cancer when Ellis was eleven years old.

They start out at a casual walk. Dave wedges himself between Ellis and Keith. He is short enough that they can talk over his head. Ellis explains about the bat that found its way into his house the night before, and Keith laughs his big, hearty laugh. He is missing a tooth from where he rode his bike off of the rough and hit a tree. In the moments of silence, he tongues at the gap with a faint sucking sound that always drives Dave batty.

Then all at once, Keith starts running and Ellis gives chase. There is no prompt or preamble. They race each other down the narrow stretch of road, hollering and laughing into the yellow sky. Dave brings up the shuffling rear, picking up a kind of loping jog. He does not like to race. They run until they reach the end of the block, where they lean on each other, panting like dogs.

"You're gettin' faster," Keith praises. He gives Ellis's melon a playful shove.

"It ain't fair. Your legs are longer."

Their eyes meet, blue on blue. Ellis smiles. Keith disengages and gives the approaching Dave a push.

"Hey, shortstop," he chimes.

"I thought we was getting ice cream," Dave says.

"We are," Keith replies dismissively. He roughs him up a bit more until Dave shouts at him to quit it. He always seems to lose his temper faster with Keith, to the extent that Dave can lose his temper. He is entirely level-headed. Keith and Ellis share a kinship in that they are not.

"Christ, didn't mean to make you squeal," Keith mocks to mask his hurt. He always hates to upset Dave. He gives Ellis a searching look, as if seeking forgiveness.

"Don't you know by now?" Ellis asks him, just to be difficult. "Why are you goin' and doin' that for, Keith?"

"Shit," Keith growls. "I said I was sorry."

"No, you never," Dave sniffs. "Go on and be a liar."

"I'm sorry, then. Now I gone and said it."

"My Ma says it ain't a proper apology if it's got to be asked out of you."

Now Dave is just being a pain on purpose. Keith gives him another shove, and this one makes him stumble. Dave makes a squawking sound like a bird and runs to Ellis for cover. Ellis somehow ends up being the mediator between them, just like Dave is the mediator between Ellis and Keith when they catch on fire with each other.

"Quit it with your fighting," Ellis says. "It's like herdin' cats around here."

Dave gets his fists around the edge of Ellis's T-shirt and won't let go. His body is full of heat. Keith looks at them for a minute before jerking his head abruptly, as if someone has called his name.

"All right," he says. "Let's get on out of the sun."

"I don't like summer," Dave says honestly. The heat doesn't sit well with him and sometimes makes him sick.

They find the malt shop and ooze inside as an entity. Keith gets strawberry ice cream, Ellis gets chocolate, and Dave sticks to vanilla. They compliment each other this way, filling in each other's flaws seamlessly.

Ellis's mother always used to say that birds of a feather flocked together, but the three of them seem too polar to adhere to that rule. Perhaps, there is a common denominator they are missing, a similarity felt innately, but Ellis can't place it.

They sit inside until Keith, getting restless, insists that they sit in the shade of the awning outdoors. He does not burn, so the sunlight doesn't bother him like it does the others.

It's hot but still a relief from the sun. Ellis attacks his ice cream with large bites that stab his brain with an icy pick. Dave, sitting beside him, laps demurely at his child's cone, whittling it away bit by bit. Keith watches them thoughtfully, licking broad stripes up the cone in a way that would be obscene if he knew, if he knew what he was doing; in a few years, he will know, and he will use this weapon wisely. For now, the primal feelings stirring in him are muted and confused.

Dave is watching Ellis with a soft smile. "El," he says quietly. "Look at you."

"What?" Ellis asks, impatient to get to the cone.

"You got chocolate all over your face."

"It's good," Ellis says defiantly. "Here, taste it."

Dave hesitates, and Ellis fully expects him to decline; but then he leans in and shyly has a taste. His eyes are huge and brown. He smiles. "All right," he agrees. "It's good."

"So there," Ellis says, and is surprised to find his voice halfway gone. He's been raring up to get a summer cold, though, and he's lost his voice before.

Keith isn't saying anything. He's staring across the street at a stray cat as it creeps across the rooftops. Then he says suddenly, "I caught my Pop with a lady."

"What's that?" Dave asks. He's fiddling restlessly with his crucifix.

Keith looks at him. A little bit of his ice cream is dribbling into his hand. "She ain't my Mama, that lady."

"You're pullin' my leg," Ellis says, more out of courtesy than actual surprise. He doesn't know Keith's father very well, and anyway this isn't the first time.

Keith bites his lip over and over. "They wasn't doin' anything sinful, or whatever, I mean… but I know. I can tell things."

"Can you?" Dave gives his crucifix a particularly savage tug.

"I guess I can. Sure." Keith pushes a hand through his unchecked hair. He has no Mama to cut it for him. It has always been a streak of genius in him to notice small details and form conclusions from them. It's part of the reason he is so impossible to handle, to predict. His energy carries him from one moment to the next, details processed too quickly for anyone to follow. A doctor might call it an illness. Ellis thinks it is brilliance.

"Like, I can tell that you're a liar," Keith adds under his breath. Ellis almost doesn't catch it.

Dave tosses his head dubiously. "I ain't a liar."

"You are, too."

Dave sucks in a breath and doesn't say anything for a moment. "I don't know what you're tryin' to say."

"I'm sayin' that you're a liar. You can't make promises about things and then not follow in on 'em."

"I never promised you anythin'," Dave argues hotly. "You can't promise off people like that. I'm bein' a good friend, anyhow. You could go to hell."

Ellis feels utterly lost now. The conversation has turned somewhere completely beyond his knowledge. "What're you all talkin' about?" he bleats helplessly, but they're ignoring him for once.

Keith's skin has turned the color of milk, except for the flush of red around his eyelids that signals that he's getting mad. His hands shake just a little, so he rests his ice cream cone against his knee. "I guess I am goin' to hell, then," he says.

Dave lets out a noise as if he has been punched in the solar plexus. "You can't go on and say that," he yelps. "That ain't right!"

"What do you care? I ain't you." Keith gestures broadly, as he is wont to do when he gets excited. He loses his ice cream and it plops onto the pavement. "Hell, what does it even matter to you? You're gettin' what you want."

"I don't want anythin'. You hear? I'm right. You ain't right."

"I'm right! I'm right, all right! You promised me you wouldn't."

"I ain't done anything, Keith!"

Keith gets up. Ellis stands with him, but Dave grabs his sleeve. "Let him go," he says quietly. "I'll explain. I'll let you know."

"You don't tell him anything," Keith mutters. The fire seems to be dying in him. "He ain't got to know some things about me."

"I told you, he ain't that way. I told you he ain't like that."

Keith throws his hands down and walks by them. Dave grabs weakly at him and his fingers slip uselessly off of his arm. For once, Ellis can find no words and stands baffled in the aftermath as Keith wanders off and is gone; his unfinished ice cream melts on the hot cement until it is a puddle the color of bloody spit.

"What was that all about?" Ellis asks Dave. "Huh?"

Dave shrugs. His entire palm swallows the crucifix, blocking Ellis from its accusing gaze for once. He says, "Jealous," and then corrects himself, "I don't know, I don't know."

Ellis starts after the place where Keith vanished from sight. He is gone. And when Ellis turns around, Dave is standing there with his hands clasped together over his heart like a wallflower at a dance. His skin has broken out again in that hectic red blush.

"We ain't right people," Dave whispers. "God, Lord, I'm awful sorry."

Something cool like icewater slithers through Ellis's gut, and suddenly he knows.

-- fin


End file.
